SCO comes to China’s defence, seeks WHO-led role to battle Covid

Sandeep Dikshit
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 13

The COVID-19 pandemic along with terrorism against the backdrop of the two horrific attacks on a maternity hospital and Gurdwara Har Rai Sahab, both in Kabul, dominated the videoconferencing of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers from India, Pakistan, China, Russia and four Central Asian countries.

The SCO FMs’ meeting took place days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo initiated a videoconferencing of his counterparts from India, Israel, Brazil, South Korea, Japan and Australia where attempts were made to corner China.

In contrast, a SCO joint declaration, also endorsed by India, strongly called for centrality of the UN system in combating Covid and noted the need for effective cooperation with WHO and other international bodies.

In a rare exception, the SCO did not become a battleground over Kashmir.

Pakistan’s veteran Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi eschewed the K word and instead spoke allegorically.

He said countries or religions should not be maligned on terrorism related allegations and sought accountability for perpetrators of state terrorism “against people under illegal occupation”.

Besides calling for various types of cooperation on Covid, virtually all SCO members, who are neighbours or near-neighbours of Afghanistan, dwelt on its situation.

“Terrorism continues to be the overwhelming threat to security and stability in the SCO region and would require collective action,” said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during his intervention.

Qureshi welcomed the US-Taliban peace pact and wanted the Kabul government to work out a political settlement with SCO playing a facilitative role.

The US-led interaction on Monday saw attempts to blame China for the spread of the disease and hiding its initial spread.

At the SCO meet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came to China’s defence.

“We have to state that even in the conditions of a pandemic, our American colleagues and their allies do not abandon their attempts to escalate confrontation, to use the current situation to impose their point of view, which they call an order based on rules. As you know, they invent the rules themselves,” Lavrov said while dismissing the accusations against China as “baseless”.

The SCO joint declaration also noted the importance of effective cooperation between the SCO and WHO in the fight against coronavirus infection.